Re: The GNU list of 'truly' free as in freedom distros

Re: The GNU list of 'truly' free as in freedom distros

Well, it is Kolt's thread. I agree the title and sub-forum placement don't make it a good place for a support thread, I don't know if it can be called hijacking. It may be inappropriate repurposing at worst.

Re: The GNU list of 'truly' free as in freedom distros

Re: The GNU list of 'truly' free as in freedom distros

Installed parabola one day on my laptop, wireless didn't work.. good bye parabola and hello arch linux once again. FSF is doing great but computer hardware is not ready for fully free systems. There are already fully free hardware computers out there but it's not as good in performance and user experience as a computer proprietary hardware is. I'd say that those GNU systems are really for those who take privacy to the core, and won't mind using a system that kills off a lot of features in order to preserve privacy. Like forget about youtube or anything related to google if you really want full privacy. I try to use only open source software but I need skype, I came to arch because I want to be free to choose what application I install and to get away from microsoft's privacyless systems and gnu systems do make you free as in "freedom" but not free as in "choice" because there is countless of things that you won't be able to do because it violates your privacy.

Re: The GNU list of 'truly' free as in freedom distros

drcouzelis wrote:

Your post confuses me... The Free Software Foundation is about promoting software freedom, but why are all your points are about privacy?

If security wasn't based on trust, we wouldn't need free software to be able to eliminate a third party as a potential trust issue generator. In this instance, software is a broad term for any kind of information processing, be it as part of hardware or pure logic. If I have reasons to believe, that my hardware is not trustworthy, then my software can be as free as it wants. This is one fundamental point in the everlasting debate about the implications of security on free software. It is, in my opinion, the only element of the free software debate, that can be observed by purely technical points of view without looking at social dynamics, because the social consensus is, that people are inherently not trustworthy unless trust has been established. All the other points of free software are fundamentally social, because they contradict the dominant notions of intellectual property, information as a source of power and the opposite concepts of sharing to improve the world (non-balance based investment) versus monetizing (or more generally "profitizing") everything that is done or made (projection based/balance based investment).

In a matter of speaking, security is the only quantifiable component of the free software concept. It's purely technical, it doesn't matter whether your intruder is a social entity or an artificial intelligence (with the small exception of social engineering, but this is rather argumentative). Opposed to the social aspects of free software, security (or code quality, a close relative of the concept "security"), added security is not transitional. If you come up with an "unbreakable" encryption today, rolling it out would largely be a matter of updating repositories and making people aware of the update. The social order wouldn't change, I guess if your datacenter was under attack, because you neglected to modernize your security, most insurances would raise an eyebrow before or even instead of paying for damages.

The social aspects take longer, there is no absolute number behind what makes the world a "good place". If every shred of work you do is being compensated by a monetary micro transaction and all the values are acceptable for everyone, then this could be a "perfect world". If everybody spent the same amount of time and effort and ended up being subjectively happy, then this system would work flawlessly. If we traded the micro compensations for a general understanding of the necessities of participating in the construction of our future, then this could be the "perfect society" as well. Unfortunately, it is the common consensus, that social entities are inherently untrustworthy, so it is impossible to predict, how the transition between a capitalistic society based on micro compensations to a society of awareness and working towards common goals would look like. There are unpredictable uncertainties involved, because the statistical methods do not (yet) allow to analyze all the possible data resulting from human behavior. Most social studies involve polls and surveys, where we have to factor in the inherent trustunworthyness of every individual.

Now take a computer system and try to predict security issues. Beyond social engineering and side channel attacks, you are mostly able to statically analyze what happens on runtime. You can predict bugs, even if user input is involved. While this is still based on experience (building up trust in your knowledge), it is less chaotic. If your database queries are not sanitized, an injected command will always have the same result. A human finding your front door unlocked will not automatically break in and steal your stuff, they might even do the opposite and inform you about the problem, out of whatever motivation.

There is a cliche - so common, that it is accepted by many as a fact - that dealing with information processing systems changes your view on society, because you learn concepts different form your upbringing through a more analytic mindset. When dealing with code, you will learn at some point, that you should concentrate on the portion of a problem, that is solvable for you. If you can use free software to improve security, then you have found the most practical and short term relevant part of what free software stands for. For many people dealing with open source software I talked to, the initial part that peaked their interest was not to make the world a better place, but to see, what open source software can do for them. Working with open source software then gives you the opportunity to expand your view and develop long term goals and idealism, but the short term benefit will always be the initial motivator: Security, more control, elimination of a third party as a trust factor.

Re: The GNU list of 'truly' free as in freedom distros

I try to run open-source software as much as i can, i only run proprietary software if i really must or need it for example video card drivers and a few games maybe.Its better to run open-source software and support open-source software instead of proprietary software and if it is a open-source alternative i run it.

The GNU list of libre or truly free distros is distros where the proprietary software and drivers and so on is removed and they only contain free/libre software.Parabola GNU/Linux is an example of that, its a libre/free version of Arch where the proprietary software and drivers is removed from Arch.

Re: The GNU list of 'truly' free as in freedom distros

Your post confuses me... The Free Software Foundation is about promoting software freedom, but why are all your points are about privacy?

Basicly, I realized that the FSF-endorsed distros wants to keep the source code of the entire distro auditable at 100% and use the FSF recommended licences (Apache 2.0, MPL 2.0, Modified BSD, etc.).

if we talk about drivers, the FSF-endorsed distros haves the main feature of just keep the free/libre drivers (those that have support of the source code). A feature that is also particular in OpenBSD, whith the difference that that GNU/Linux distros keeps the well-functional free/libre drivers and some of them are avariable at the H-node website (actually, some of the libre drivers such AMDGPU are not added to the directory, but you can ask for the hardware support to the distro maintener if the hardware that you have is completely supported via free/libre driver).

Also, the usage of the distro that you choose depends of the needs of each person.

Re: The GNU list of 'truly' free as in freedom distros

moon_wolf wrote:

I try to run open-source software as much as i can, i only run proprietary software if i really must or need it for example video card drivers and a few games maybe.Its better to run open-source software and support open-source software instead of proprietary software and if it is a open-source alternative i run it.

The GNU list of libre or truly free distros is distros where the proprietary software and drivers and so on is removed and they only contain free/libre software.Parabola GNU/Linux is an example of that, its a libre/free version of Arch where the proprietary software and drivers is removed from Arch.